Leaving Istanbul

Tonight is our last in Istanbul. Tomorrow we move on to Safranbolu, to the east.  We are just taking care of a few things, packing up (we had sprawled out in our large flat), and preparing ourselves for the 7 hour bus trip on the morrow.

Yesterday I tried unsuccessfully to visit the Aya Sophia, the famous Byzantine church from the mid 6th century. Four cruise ships are in town, and there was a long line all day, which I just couldn't face in the sun and heat of the day. So I took a stroll through the park below Topkapi Palace, a lovely and rare spot of green in this city.  It's there that I spotted the statue of Ataturk (see photo).

Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal) is a national hero - THE founding father of modern Turkey.  Not only did he lead the Turkish forces at Gallipoli during World War I, he organized the last vestiges of the Ottoman empire into a unified Turkey, and fought back invading Greeks who had made a major push east after the end of the war (parts of western Turkey historically were part of ancient Greece).   As the leader of the new state, he set about modernizing Turkey and making it closer to Europe than the Middle East.  Throughout the 1920's and 1930's Turkey adopted the Gregorian calendar (bringing it in line with the West), reformed its alphabet (adopting the Roman script), standardized the Turkish language,  outlawed the fez, instituted universal suffrage, and required that Turks adopt surnames, something they had previously gone without. Reading up on Turkey's history, one can understand why there are photos of him everywhere!